In the United States, talk of vacation (or as they call it in the 51st state "holiday") is usually dominated by internationalist snobs who insist that the Europeans, with their still-life Augusts and 28-day paid sabbaticals, are way ahead of us. So you might think there's something slightly un-American about Time Off.

And you might be right. During our recent trip to TrendWest Resorts Inc. in Burlingame CA, we learned that the familiar vacation mix of scheduling angst and travel fretfulness can be blended with a whole new seasoning of economic anxiety.

What is TrendWest Resorts Inc.? TrendWest Resorts should not be confused with TrendWest Vacations, although both are affiliated in some way with WorldMark the Club and WorldMark Resorts (Partners In Growth), and are owned by the development company (and possible Star Wars action figure) Jeld-Wen.

How did we end up visiting TrendWest? Free Airline Tickets! Just for attending the TrendWest video presentation, we were awarded round-trip airline tickets to sunny San Diego, and three days' stay at a rated hotel. That's the beauty of being an American; there are so many people desperate for your attention that you can make out like a bandit just by showing up at an event.

Things definitely perked up when we watched the first of TrendWest's video presentations. This one was hosted by Robert Urich, who jumped from one sunlit resort to another: One minute the second-generation Love Boat captain was kicking back with fishermen in Key West; exit stage right and there was TV's Dan Tanna in a white cotton shirt, hitting the links in Palm Desert; one more cut and the Hawaiian-shirted Spenser, For Hire star was estivating amid a swirl of tropical fronds. And, well, if you're half the Robert Urich fan I am, you would have been ready to throw down your $16,000 right then and there.

But something was holding me back. For one thing, the resorts Urich seemed to be inhabiting had an oddly generic quality, as if they'd been cooked up by digital effects. Oh, I believe Urich was actually present at all these resorts, but there was something about those terraced condos,those strolling couples, those perfectly adequate beachfront views, that just screamed "vacation spot!" And I just don't get vacation. Maybe it's because I'm un-American, or maybe it's because I'm too American, or maybe it's because I grew up in a resort town, but vacation has always seemed to me to be something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Mario didn't help matters with his narrow definition of what constitutes a vacation. Throughout most of the 1990s our vacations have mostly consisted of visiting in-laws in the Middle East. Mario wouldn't count that as a vacation vacation, since on these trips we stayed with friends or relatives. A real vacation, apparently, is a rigidly defined, Club Med-style affair, in which I would stay in a hotel, rent a sightseeing car, shop for local arts and crafts, and generally sit around like an oaf while being waited on by secretly contemptuous natives.

Mario had me draw a vertical line down a page of notebook paper, and catalogue the differences between Vacation Ownership and mere Time Sharing. Time sharing, it turned out, is basically a sop for old fogeys, retired couples whose imaginations are so stunted they'd be happy with a typical warmup-suit-and-golf vacation. Vacation ownership, on the other hand, was for people like us, adventurous travelers for whom the world is one big Happening. For us, TrendWest's (or WorldMark, the club's) own network of resorts on the west coast would just be the beginning.

That's because our ownership of the TrendWest condos could be exchanged any year for "credits" in the RCI vacation network. And not just regular credits. Since TrendWest's condos were all in the highest condo ratings category (I don't know whose category this was, but I suspect it was TrendWest's), we would be able to trade our credits in TrendWest, at par or better, for vacation credits in any of the vacation spots in Urich's RCI Network. Sure, we might want to use our TrendWest time share for an occasional weekend getaway, but for our real vacation (here Mario flipped out a picture of a catamaran with a woman sitting on the bow of the starboard hull; Mario had circled the woman in ballpoint pen, to emphasize the scale of the boat), our "gold" credits would let us write our own ticket, anywhere in the world. And all this, thousands of TrendWest credits every year for the rest of our lives, could be ours for a one-time outlay of only $16,000.

I was pretty excited by the prospect. This credits business gave me a satisfying sense of being in the kind of science fiction movie where residents of other solar systems always do business not in Dollars or Francs or Marks but in so many "Credits." And although Einstein himself could apprehend less than 20 percent of this information, the better-than-time-sharing arrangement seemed to me unimpeachable. After all, we'd be out $16,000, but that would pay for itself with the vacation savings we'd get in only a few years (three years, by Mario's calculation). After that, we'd be getting a fresh batch of credits every year, so the longer we lived, the more soundly we would beat the system. The only drawback was the several-hundred-dollar fee we'd have to pay each year to switch our credits.

The other drawback was my lack of facility with figuring out lifetime amortization schemes. Like the caveman who shields the sun from his eyes and then believes his hand is larger than the sun, I just couldn't get my mind around the idea that $16,000 would ever pay for itself, no matter how many vacations we ended up taking at steep discounts. Or actually it was worse: I imagined there would be a way to make it work, but I wouldn't figure out how, that we'd be continually nickel-and-dimed with fees, ill-planned credit trades and last-minute changes.

In the end, though, what rendered me unable to make a decision was the fact that I had to make a decision. When I asked for a chance to think this offer over, Mario dropped the bomb: I had to decide then and there, or the offer of gold standard vacation ownership would be withdrawn forever.

"Why do we have to decide now?" I asked.

"Because we have people from the better business bureau who come in here posing as customers, just to check that we're doing what we say we're doing. If I told you this was a one-time offer, and then let you come back another time, I could lose my license."

"But why do you make it a one-time offer in the first place? It sounds good, but it's a lot of money and we'd need time to think about it. Why can't we do that?"

I wish I could remember Mario's answer, but in fact I didn't even understand his response well enough to forget it. In any event, his position was adamantine: He wouldn't even give us brochures for the road. And why not? Why tempt us with what we couldn't have? Like the Lord, Mario presented a choice that was clear, stark and unappealable. On the one hand, a lifetime of vacation ownership, sunlit decades of happy wandering stretching before us. On the other, the curse of indecision: exile from Vacation ownership, eternal loss of our credits, bupkes on a lifetime scale. Even if we came crawling back to TrendWest, our records were already in their system, and the order would come down from on high: Give them a timeshare if they want it, but keep them away from the good stash.

You'll recall that I promised economic anxiety at the beginning of this article. There you have it. Ever since we let Mario's deal slide, I've been kicking myself: If only I'd known! If only I'd calculated the odds before my TrendWest video presentation, I'd have gone into there ready to make my decision for Fun, to take those gold credits as my right, to slap down my money and declare "Sixteen K, Mario. Put it all on Gold!"

Don't let it happen to you. Before you get your vacation ownership cold call, do your research. Figure out the angles, and know what your credits will buy you. Learn how vacation ownership will work for you, and be ready to make a choice, before the SS Vacation Fun pulls out of port without you. Because you only get one chance at the chance of a lifetime.